Richard has urged me to get over my habit of generalizing. I have always responded that generalizing is a tool of analysts and the goal is always to challenge the generalization, see if it holds water. Thus Steven Waldman and two other experts on the evangelicals spoke
repeatedly of the political behavior of "white Evangelical Protestants"
on PBS the other day. Evidently that behavior is predictable. Thus Nick Lemann said of the last ruling class in the U.S. that it was an "Episcopacy," using a religious descriptor to blanket an elite, because Episcopalian summoned ideas about patrician values and manners that he thought were helpful to a reader; and I agree. Thus Joe Klein spoke recently of the divided loyalties of "Jewish neoconservatives." Abe Foxman challenged him, as he challenged none of the other religious generalizers, not to use the word Jewish. They just happen to be Jews, he was saying. In the same way that people just happen to be brunettes, or like the color blue.
In fact, Grant Smith of Irmep is about to come out with a new book about the birth of the lobby in which universalist Jews protested in the early 60s that there is no such thing as a Jewish vote, it's not predictable in any way. A long time ago.
For myself, I can only say that the distinction between Jews and non-Jews was extremely important in the culture I grew up in, as presumably it's important to Catholics and Muslims as well with respect to their groups. We thought about it all the time, and it was considered an imperative to only marry someone of that tribe, from all the juicy bipeds available in the world. These were not strictly religious or cultural issues. To suggest that the high wall my friends and family saw between us and the non-Jewish world had no political implications is folly. In fact, there are political orthodoxies. As a Jewish math professor, David Klein, has lately shown, it is extremely important to the Israel lobby to enforce unanimity on Jewish ideas re Israel in the U.S. And so they chase Finkelstein from every perch he tries to find in this world and make him out to be a crazy. As Aaron Ahuvia of Brit Tzedek has stated, the politics of American Jewish opinion is dominated by a "well-funded" group on the right, which I would say flows easily into Ahuvia's two other righteous compartments: the Mel Levine "worrieds," and the Jerrold Nadler "realistic doves." If Jews are so diverse, why do 58 percent of American Jews support that intolerant concept: an undivided Jerusalem? Because of indoctrination, for one thing. Even Jeffrey Goldberg has lately pushed urgently for glasnost on these questions, for open debate, for "blunt" argument against rich supporters of an undivided Jerusalem.
As it is, there is a litmus test in my community on giving any ground at all
to anti-Zionists. This ought to change. Many anti-Zionists support
a two-state solution out of a desire for peace. (I do.) Right now Jewish anti-Zionist opinion is weeded from the garden of Jewish life, though even Ahuvia and Michael Walzer acknowledge our presence. Humanist/universalist ideas are growing in all religious communities. It is why Saif Ammous cherished Mahmoud Darwish's presence, he was a universalist who didn't look at people's religion. Ammous is not a religious generalizer, I am. I say intolerance in Islam is being jostled by people who believe in free speech and women's rights. I say Christian evangelical orthodoxy is being challenged by young voters who will vote for a pro-choice candidate because he's so good on other issues. Until these orthodoxies cease to be ortho– politically correct– I will insist on my right to generalize about pervasive structures of thought….
You're ranting a bit there.
Ultimately, its ok for Foxman to speak only about what he knows about, only about what is his business. I try to do that, not gamble on what I really don't know in fact, or judgement.
I've known your parents and family for 45 years. I didn't have the impression that they were particularly xenophobic at all. Your father is a scientist, a uniquely non-parochial community.
Maybe he valued the part of Judaism that is a long-term river, that can only be conveyed in intimate relations, like a parent to child that includes both the genetic (already conveyed by your birth) and cultural.
Mamoud Darwish was most likely not poetic and universalistic because of his politics, but the other way around, political because what was important (intimacy, acceptance, respect) conflicted with how the world played out.
Any recommendations of works by him, Saif?
Politics as a religion creates a different parochial approach, a groupism of political correctness, a fixation on the other as function or caricature rather than as sympathized human.
Generalization feeds that, the dehumanization of others. Caricature only.
Use it if you like Phil. It just contains the same inevitable moral distortions as using weapons too cavalierly.
Focusing on the hyperwealthy Zionist Jewish oligarchs to the exclusion of several thousand members of the (not just Jabotinskian) Zionist intelligentsia and several 10s of thousands of employees of the Organized Jewish Community and the Israel Lobby would be a mistake.
The Zionist intelligentsia is probably the most important component of the mix, for it mobilizes the other groups.
Normally we do not talk about an intelligentsia in American culture although the Polish and Russian intelligentsias played important albeit very different roles in Poland and Russia.
During the 70s Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz attacked leftist (mostly) Jewish intellectuals as the New Class as a sort of periphrasis for the term intelligentsia.
They may have been uncomfortable with the use of the foreign-sounding term intelligentsia, or possibly residual intellectual honesty prevented them from applying an inappropriate term, but most likely they might have been concerned that using the term intelligentsia might inspire American political analysts to think of mobilized Neocon (Jabotinskian) and Neoliberal (Friedmanites) intellectuals as segments of the Zionist intelligentsia, which is the sole example of the Eastern European phenomenon on the American political scene.
This post from Kevin MacDonald is relevant to Phil's current musings.
Philip Weiss II: Jews as a Component of the American Elite
On a related note it's not a great surprise that David Klein is pro-Finkelstein for at least in the realm of mathematics teaching he is somewhat paleoconservative:
"LAUSD teachers and math coaches are wrongly instructed not to use time-tested, standard methods of arithmetic. High school teachers are steered away from conventional and powerful techniques in algebra and directed to use unreliable “guess and check” methods and physical objects instead. Even elementary school teachers are discouraged from following their high-quality state-approved math books and from teaching the best methods of calculation, the standard algorithms of arithmetic."
By the way, the post title seems to be an answer of sorts to a question from the big vampire. Phil says he doesn't read the comments but he is smart enough not to waste the counsels of the immortal. Brrrr…
PS: I read this article from Klein last year. It was a strange dejew vu reading his name in Mondoweiss. I immediately started searching for the PAZ-Jeo because when a dejew vu occurs there is no escape from a painful death at the hands of the witty looking agents, unless you are able to find the nearest hot line for making donations to the Lobby and damn it! only PAZ-Jeo, the chosen one, knows where those frigging lines can be found.
"Ultimately, its ok for Foxman to speak only about what he knows about, only about what is his business."-Witty
So, what is his business? Does the ADL mission statement help to answer that question? According to the ADL's web site, the ADL is the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency, ADL fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects civil rights for all. And it fights all forms of bigotry in the U.S. and abroad. It's charter states Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.
"Foxman upset many of his colleagues by extending a welcome to Christian conservatives, whose leaders tended to be strongly pro-Israel even as they spoke in disturbing terms of America’s “Christian” identity. Foxman was willing to cut them some slack on issues of social justice, and even of church-state relations, in the name of solidarity toward Israel." link to nytimes.com
So with the ADL misson statement in mind, Richard, Phil can't call Foxman on his negligence or any significant omission?
Re, speaking in generalities, " I try to do that, not gamble on what I really don't know in fact, or judgement–Witty
"In his most recent book — “Never Again?” — he [Foxman] makes the stupefyingly counterintuitive claim that high rates of Jewish assimilation are a reaction to discriminatory treatment, rather than a proof of the opposite. “One out of three people in these United States believes that the Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the U.S.,” he growled. “That’s a classic anti-Semitic canard.” And yet a Pew Global Attitudes Poll in 2004 found that anti-Semitism had declined in much of the West and was lowest in the United States. A Pew poll last year found American support for Israel as strong now as at any time in the last 13 years." ttp://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/14/magazine/14foxman.t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogi
Similarly, Foxman once claimed that 3 of 4 watchers of Archie Bunker across the USA back in the day were laughing with Archie, not at him. Speaking of my own family back then, five sibs and two parents, everybody laughed at Archie except my dad, who then would get really pissed at all of us. Of course that's just my experience. I didn't have the impression that my family was particularly xenophobic at all. I came from a lower-middle class background. Did the character Archie played maybe value the part of his identity that "is a long-term river?"
Foxman generalizes, as if he could read minds across the USA (and abroad).
Phil generalizes–Witty (who generalizes all the time) takes issue with Phil, directly inferring Phil should try much harder not to generalize about stuff he really doesn't know in fact, like his own parents and local community norms or judgement. Like for example Phil's own personal experiences growing up. His take on his own immediate milieu back then. Then Witty quibbles further, supported by a gross generalization about scientists, unsupported by anything. (The recent anthrax suspect who killed himself had a few biases, no?)
'Thus Joe Klein spoke recently of the divided loyalties of "Jewish neoconservatives." Abe Foxman challenged him, as he challenged none of the other religious generalizers, not to use the word Jewish. They just happen to be Jews, he was saying.'
—–
Jews stop "just happening" to be Jews when they embrace Zionism, which is an ideological movement with a distinctly racialist, economic and geopolitical agenda that goes far beyond merely the question of Jewish nationalism in the Levant. Joining the Zionist network is a conscious choice to embrace Zionist doctrine, just as joining, say, the Wahabi movement is a conscious choice that some Muslims make.
Once any Jew joins the Jewish Zionist network, any claim to victim status goes right out the window, which is why Jewish Zionists like Foxman are so desperate to conflate all Jews with Jewish Zionism and insist that criticism of Zionism is anti-Semitic — so they can continue to play the ethnic and victim card in the service of Zionist aggression and financial exploitation and usury. They want their cake, and to eat it, too.
Again, this raises the question: why don't non-Zionist Jews insist on a distinction between "the Jews" and "Jewish Zionists," and regularly employ it themselves, just as, for example, the Wahabi strain of Islam is identified and distinguished by non-Wahabi Muslims? Just as the Christian Right is distinguished by non-right-wing Christians?
The Zionists have nearly all Jews so psychologically whipped, they are basically being held hostage to the Zionist agenda. The Zionists are incredibly venal, ruthless, and dare I say, evil people. Why, just look at what they do to dissidents like Finkelstein who speak out against them. That they have control of organized Judaism is a pity and disgrace.
" Thus Nick Lemann said of the last ruling class in the U.S. that it was an "Episcopacy," using a religious descriptor to blanket an elite, because Episcopalian summoned ideas about patrician values and manners that he thought were helpful to a reader; and I agree."
Ruling class! At least you are honest. Our current rulers seem to be of the belief that they have a right to change all of the rules and traditions of the nation to suit themselves, as if nothing came before them, just because they have arrived. I don't think it will work out well for any of us, but charges of anitsemitism aren't going to work forever.
One other distinction I believe would be useful in making and regularly employing is between Israeli Jewish Zionists and diaspora Jewish Zionists. Although there are Israeli Jewish Zionists who exploit the larger Zionist economic and geopolitical agenda internationally, the majority of Israeli Jewish Zionists are probably prone mostly towards merely Jewish nationalism. But so many diaspora Jewish Zionists have their fingers in so many pies in relationship to the Zionist network–pies that have just about nothing to do with Israel whatsoever– that their Zionism reaches a whole other level of chicanery, hypocrisy and venality (not to mention the cowardice of crying “forward, Israeli Jews!” from the safety and comfort of plush living rooms throughout “the nations” between face-stuffing bites of Faux Gras.)
In my view, the only form of life possibly lower than a diaspora Jewish Zionist would have to be a non-Jewish, Zionist collaborator, ie probably 80% of the current US Congress and a similar percentage of the US mainstream media. And of course, 100% of the Bush and Clinton administrations.
And then there's this point-of-view
My Life as a Secular Jew
by Katie Halper
link to katiehalper.com
[...]
While I've found certain Jewish communities and practices alienating, I do feel Jewish. Yet the Jews I identify with are Jews who identify with Jews as well as non-Jews. And this, itself, draws from both a rich tradition of Jewish social justice and, at the same time, a universal sense of solidarity that defies religious, ethnic, and national boundaries. Just as religious Jews connect with the rituals they inherit from their families, I feel a connection to the secular traditions in which I was raised.
[...]
My parents are almost a parody of Upper West Side secular Jews. Their apartment is filled with saints, shivas, Buddhas, and the occasional dream catcher. The only Jewish holiday we celebrate—Passover—is based in a historical story of oppression, resistance, and liberation. Until recently, I didn't even know Passover was a Jewish holiday. I thought it was a Black holiday, like Kwanzaa, but much, much older because while my family honors the Jews' Exodus out of Egypt, most of our Seder is spent discussing slavery in the United States, the Civil Rights Movement, and now, the occupation of Iraq. The story of the suffering of Jews in Egypt is a mere starting point for exploring more recent realms of oppression, wherever—and to whomever—they occur.
[...]
"Again, this raises the question: why don't non-Zionist Jews insist on a distinction between "the Jews" and "Jewish Zionists," and regularly employ it themselves, just as, for example, the Wahabi strain of Islam is identified and distinguished by non-Wahabi Muslims? Just as the Christian Right is distinguished by non-right-wing Christians?"–Ed
Good question–any takers, Witty?
And related, there is quite a bit of discussion on TV, from time to time, regarding the question: Why don't American muslims publically acknowledge ISLAM has been hijacked by a small group/network of (radical) muslims? Goose for gander, but how often is the following question asked, even indirectly: Why don't American Jews publically acknowledge Judiasm has been hijacked by a small group/network of (radical) Zionists?
I don't see that the Koran is any more evil than the Old Testament-Talmud in terms of The Other.
"Why don't American Jews publically acknowledge Judiasm has been hijacked by a small group/network of (radical) Zionists?"
I don't know that the network is small, religious or rightwing. I know lefty, athesit Jews who are fun to be around ntil the issue of Palestine comes up. At that point, hair bristles, eyes narrow, and logic, along with objectivity, flies out the window.
I was raised a Protestant. I lapsed – utterly, irrevocably – many years ago. Never looked back. In short, none of the "before" has ever had any bearing at all on my outlook, my identity, etc. Counts for nothing. Moved on and that was that.
Which is what – as a total outsider – I find so mystifying about being Jewish. Correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that for many Jewish people – not all, I'm sure – their whole life seems to revolve around that one single fact – everything is viewed through that prism. That would drive me crazy. I'd feel trapped, balled and chained.
Charles,
American Jews don't feel that anything has been hijacked (a LOADED term).
We understand that there is dialog and diversity in Jews' political attitudes and conclusions.
We DON'T conclude that there is a monolithic "Israel Lobby", that has hijacked anything (US government certainly not, nor academia, nor the press, nor Jewish popular opinion).
The size of the network –
I think it depends what you mean by small.
If you count oligarchs, intelligentsia and employees, I think you are talking about 50,000 people or maybe 100,000 tops, all of whom are quite easily identifiable.
Not only are they highly mobilized, but they also control almost the entire Jewish educational system worldwide.
It gives them a lot of control of Jewish opinion outside the network.
The transformation of Jewish education into a Zionist indoctrination system began in the 1880s (one could even argue for a pre-Zionist phase that inculcated basic voelkisch concepts), but the Zionist education program kicked into high-gear in the 90s, and Zionist Jewish oligarchs like Steinhardt are willing to invest the big bucks in Jewish education.
We DON'T conclude that there is a monolithic "Israel Lobby", that has hijacked anything (US government certainly not, nor academia, nor the press, nor Jewish popular opinion).
Well, maybe you should, Richard. The three-step duck logic (walks like …) makes a lot more sense than denial.
And until such time as we hear zionism discussed on the TV and radio for the political movement it is, and we have an open discussion on air about why we went to war in Iraq for Israel's security as Zelikow (NSC at the time) and others have stated and why are some seeking to repeat it with Iran, until such time as these are normal news and pundit events and not screechingly labeled anti-semitic, then hijacking is what's going on. To our collective detriment. Period.
Witty: “American Jews don't feel…We understand that…We DON'T conclude that…”
I love the way that diaspora Jewish Zionist Witty presumes to speak for all “American Jews” in the above paragraphs. But this is not unusual. The characteristic probably evolved over the course of centuries, since Jews were a minority everywhere. When they were the only Jew in the room, and someone asked: “Well, what’s the Jews’ position on this?” rather than looking stupid, they would say “Well, we Jews feel that…” Today, because so many of them do it, no one questions it. It’s become part of their culture. The hive effect.
Perhaps there is an Asiatic-influence element as well, which teaches group-think for purposes of harmony. This also explains the Jewish attachment to Communism.
Little wonder that Western individualism bristles at Jewish tight-knittedness, particularly when it morphs from Judaism to Jewish-Bolshevism to Jewish-Neoconservatism to Judeo-fascism as a result of Western intolerance for…Jewish group-think. This is why Jews who can’t let go of their religo-political identities, and insist on a hell-bent pursuit of its agenda, belong in Israel. Either that, or the West will have to drop its individualism and liberalism (not to mention its Christianity, which is mostly gone anyway) and surrender to authoritarianism in order to accommodate their perspective on the way a society should be run, and by whom.
From Declassified Old Documents Shed New Light on AIPAC Espionage Prosecution – IRmep
http://www.sunherald.com/451/story/759287.html
Ed. wrote "This also explains the Jewish attachment to Communism."
Good post, but I suggest that the Jewish attachment to Communism was largely because of Communism's internationalist aspirations. Those raised to think of themselves as in-but-not-of a society are naturally attracted to the idea of weakening nationalist power structures.
Well Philip, why a two state solution and a divided Jerusalem? Isn't it obvious that a Palestinian state can't possibly function in dozens of – or even two – pieces? Isn't it obvious that the entire concept of a Jewish state is an expression of ethnic supremacism that civilized people should reject?
I am saddened that even the 'liberal' Jewish position is to support an obviously unworkable apartheid partition; and I am saddened that so few Jews support the only possible viable solution: an end to Israel, and a single multi-religious state. Until this changes, I don't see how one can distinguish Zionists, Jews and the people who brought America into war.
Hey, Witty, let's hear your response to MRW's post ("Well, maybe you should, Richard…") responding to your response to my last post.
mrw,
It doesn't walk like a duck, as Walt/Mearsheimer described.
Its not everywhere. Jews' political views and expressions vary widely, even among orthodox.
Even the organizations that are hated, change with conditions (AIPAC for example consenting to a two-state solution after decades of implying Israeli annexation of the West Bank). They live in a state of dialog, not a monolithic top-down approach. While Phil condemns APN for remaining in AIPAC, by staying it compelled AIPAC members to acknowledge that peace/justice seeking was PART of mainstream Jewish and Zionist consciousness, not an exception.
The ADL even DOES conduct periodic anti-Muslim defamation efforts. I've attended presentations at my shul following 911 for example, urging that Americans NOT take out their anger against Muslims in general.
Those are not the majority of their mission, but they are also NOT incidental efforts.
Its got skinny legs is all (that give them shinsplints, but not webbed feet, and not a bill, nor duck-like digestive system.)
The ADL occasionally condemns egregious Islamophobia unless the perpetrator is Jewish or a Jewish group.
The organization is probably trying to seize some sort of moral high ground for accusing Arabs of anti-Semitism.
I look at the cartoons that the ADL cites for anti-Semitism:
or
They seem completely reasonable. We should have more like them in our media.
In contrast, the ADL does not condemn the demonization and dehumanization of Arabs that (very often Jewish) political cartoonists introduce into our media. See Making the US Islamophobia Central.
Note that I consider the Ramirez cartoon completely reasonable.
OK, so its only a duck 99% of the same time. Or it's always a duck, with a few of its feathers that feebly change colors as caumoflage when real hunters approach.
What a horribly long stretch that is between "majority" and that microsopic area before "incidental." How do we find it–watch the Bad Publicity sign posts?
Nice to tell us what they say privately about the ADL's efforts to stop defaming Arabs in your shul. ADL blares to the world at the drop of a pin on a very selective and consistent basis, especially when its own mission statement is juxtiposed and compared.
True, the Israel Lobby duck is a rare species in that it has no bill–at least not for long. It hands that to the USA with its webbed feet.
Witty did not write that the ADL made an effort to discourage defamation of Arabs at his shul.
He wrote "Muslims," and finding support from Muslims for Zionist goals has been the holy grail of Zionist efforts since Herzl included the character Reschid Bey in Altneuland.
Witty’s phrase: “mainstream Jewish and Zionist consciousness”
Why “Jewish and Zionist” instead of “Jewish Zionist”? Is this another example of trying to wiggle out of being correctly identified and put in a category? Few would ever use the term “Wahabi and Muslim.” They would call a Wahabi Muslim what he or she is.
I find it ironic that organized Jewry, which tenaciously works to draw lines between Jews and non-Jews to the point of having developed a whole vernacular for non-Jews and their ways (gentile, goy, goyish kop etc.), thus encouraging the polarization between Jews and the “other,” itself bristles at being put in a collective category.
I believe the reason organized Judaism works against this is so that it can maintain plausible deniability when its ideological manifestations (ie Jewish Bolshevism, Jewish Zionism, Jewish Neoconservatism) are eventually and inevitably identified as the murderous, usurious scams they are. At that point in time, organized Jewry can say: “Well, the majority of Jews never really were Zionists. Why, where is the list of ‘Jewish Zionists,’ anyway?”
Very lawyerly, very clever, very Talmudic, very post-Christian America, kind of like the Bushies wiggling out of accountability for lying the country in the Iraq war by saying “prove Bush unequivocally knew Iraq had no WMD or ties to 9/11,” or the Clinonistas saying “prove Bill Clinton bombed Iraq to distract from the Lewinsky scandal.”
A political party with no principles or honor is nothing. A religion with no moral principles or honor is nothing. A country run by an “elite” with no principles or honor is nothing, hence post-Christian America and its despicable, morally stunted behavior.
Ed,
Perhaps your assumptions are wrong.
LOL..
She's jewish 'is' as meaningless as she's blued eyed to most non Jews.
But to most Jews, she's jewish means everything.
Do I/we care that it is most meaningful to Jews? No, not really, it's immaterial to our lives unless it impacts us adversely in some way.
It's like every other defined by something group, evangelicals embracing other evangelicals, cats preferring themselves to dogs.
Witty, I never said “I assume,” I said “I believe.”
But yes, perhaps my beliefs are wrong. And perhaps yours are. For me, evidence points to the latter. But I am bias, and so are you. I guess the marketplace of ideas will have to sort it all out. One problem with that, however, is Jewish and Zionist predomination in mainstream media, which shatters objectivity there as well and skews the results.
Any suggestions as to how the nation can regain its objectivity and moral underpinning in a marketplace dominated by pro-Zionist bias? Or perhaps you believe post-Christian, Zionist America as epitomized by the Bush and Clinton administrations and the current degenerate, money-worshipping cultural milieu is on the right trajectory, and thus has no need for any objectivity? Perhaps you are optimistic about the direction in which it is headed, as evidenced by MTV, the E Channel, the Iraq war lies, the war-profiteering, the two-party Zionist monopoly, etc.? Perhaps as a Jew, this all is your idea of an ideal? Perhaps in the upside down, bizarro-world, what is bad for the gentile is good for the Zionist.
If that's the case, Witty, you and your Zionist collaborators of all creeds have little reason for long-term optimism. The world can only stand on its head for so long. That is, unless you can manage to convert a majority to the Zionist creed. How's that coming along?
ED: "bizarro-world"–Kevin M calls it a Jewish parallel universe in an article on his blog. I keep thinking of that Seinfeld episode…
Joachim: Yeah, you're right. Muslims not Arabs. Yes, and the holy
grail fits perfectly. Worked quite well for the collective with the Evangelical sect of Christianity here in the USA.
Charles and Joachim,
Isn’t it interesting that the Zionists have been able to convert many Christians to the Zionist creed, and apparently even seek to convert Muslims (now that’s chutzpah!) . But they have also converted many secular humanists/socialists/left-liberals as well, as evidenced by the Democrat Party’s nearly unanimous support for Zionism, and as evidenced by post-Christian socialist Europe’s support for Zionism.
Apparently spiritualism abhors a vacuum, which suggests to me that the reason organized Jewry has sought to break down America morally and spiritually using the kinds of cultural degeneracy and debasement we see routinely spread in mass media (through, for example, the Jewish Sumner Redstone’s CBS, Viacom, MTV, BET networks, or Jewish-dominated Hollywood in general) as well as through explicitly Jewish organizations like the ADL, is so it can be rebuilt in a Zionist incarnation. I believe that’s why organized Jewry systematically debased Christianity in America and Europe for decades by, for example tying it to Nazism, too, and is tenaciously working to debase Islam.
(Of course, this also raise the specter that even individual, self-identified Jews who don’t have much to do with organized Judaism are also consciously or sub-consciously working on the organized Jewish agenda due to childhood indoctrination and programming, if not explicitly as agents for organized Judaism, then as free-lancers knowingly or unknowingly eating away at the non-Jewish majority’s former cultural preferences like termites.)
Socialism, Capitalism, secular humanism, right-wing statism, left-liberalism…all have been employed/utilized to advance the Zionist agenda. Organized Jewry seems to understand that all secular governments can be co-opted through organized Jewry’s money and connections and put to work destroying the native religion and values in order to replace it with the Zionist agenda.
The only real resistance I am seeing to this is coming from Orthodox Christianity (the post-KGB Putin’s Russia — RealJewNews.com has done a good job of documenting its re-arisen Christianity) and non-money-corrupted Islam. Of course, there are also plenty of Zionist critics across the Western ideological spectrum, but most of them are too atomized and often torn by ideological associates who are soft on Zionism and organized Jewry to make any real impact.
Ed, re: "Apparently spiritualism abhors a vacuum…"
For example, look at the notions and history of the Christianity-derived, and at least quasi-secular Transendentalism. When one is for everything, the flip-side is one is for nothing in particular.
Boon (harmony. Cf. Chinese philosophy-religion).
Bane (when tied to a bipolar world view, one spiritual collective against all others by force of social order, finance, and arms, always claimed as defensive in nature–or as altrustic, or both)
hammer the nail that sticks up, or the roof is not secure
hammer the hammer or there will be no ultimate point to the roof
It seems to me Christianity has historically offered the most room for individualism when compared to the other major religions (and attendant cultures) of the world. Especially the Protestant variety. But I don't claim to be an expert.
I was reared as a Roman Catholic. But in my early teens, as an altar boy, I left the Catholic Church. Now, I'm an agnostic, but not on principle, merely by default in my ignorance.